(upbeat music) - From NJ PBS Studios, this is NJ Spotlight News with Brianna Vannozzi.

- Good evening and thanks for joining us on this Friday night.

I'm Brianna Vannozzi.

Tonight, a few stories we're digging into later in the broadcast.

The race is on to register voters before the November election, and it looks like Republicans have the early lead.

Plus, Hurricane Katrina 20 years later.

One Rutgers grad tells his family's story of survival.

And the shrinking shoreline.

Tourism brings in billions, but it takes millions to keep the coastline beaches replenished.

But first, a few of today's top headlines.

People across the state are squeezing in one final Labor Day trip before school starts and the unofficial end of summer.

AAA Northeast predicts more than a million New Jerseyans are expected to travel, primarily by car, to the shore and other local spots.

That's about a 5% increase from last year.

And if you're worried about traffic, AAA says Saturday is expected to be the worst day for travel, but drivers can expect lower gas prices.

The average is 304.

That's the lowest they've been in the area since Labor Day weekend.

2020 during the pandemic.

Domestic flights are also cheaper this year, but expect delays if you're leaving or coming in through Newark Airport.

Flights were temporarily stopped Thursday morning due to communications issues.

The FAA has since lifted the ground stop, but as of this afternoon, there are still dozens of delays and a handful of canceled flights at Newark.

And if you are heading out, it's gonna be a gorgeous weekend weather-wise.

So the state DEP says, despite some erosion at a handful of beaches from Hurricane Erin, the shore did hold up well to the storm and the sand will be packed this weekend.

Also tonight, New Jersey has confirmed its two first human cases of West Nile virus.

State Health Department officials say a child in Atlantic County and an adult in Middlesex County both tested positive for the illness.

Now, the child showed symptoms in late July and the adult in early August.

Both were hospitalized and are recovering at home.

The Health Department is also investigating four suspected cases of West Nile and a report of a blood donor in Sussex County who tested positive but doesn't have symptoms.

While health experts warn that mosquito activity is high right now, West Nile virus has been detected in every county, especially in North Jersey.

And they're urging the public to take the issue seriously by getting rid of any standing water from around your home, since that's a breeding ground for mosquitoes, but also by wearing long sleeves and using insect repellent.

Most people infected won't show symptoms, but in rare cases, West Nile can lead to severe illness affecting the nervous system.

People over 50 and anyone with a weakened immune system are most at risk.

And the architect of New Jersey's sanctuary policy for immigrants is asking a federal judge to toss a Trump administration lawsuit that targets Newark, Hoboken, Jersey City and Patterson for their local immigration policies.

Former Attorney General, Gurbir Grewal, who's representing Newark and Hoboken in the case, filed a letter to the courts on Thursday, arguing the suit has no legal standing and violates the 10th Amendment, which bars the federal government from forcing states to carry out national immigration laws.

In the letter, Grewal argues Newark and Hoboken are aligned with New Jersey's 2018 statewide directive, which details how and when local police can assist federal immigration agents.

The Trump administration sued the cities in May claiming the local rules interfere with federal law, but Grewal letter points to multiple court rulings, including one from 2020 that rejected similar claims.

Grewal to quickly dismiss the case, saying it is critical to protect public safety.

And coming up, as the gubernatorial race for governor tightens, the push to register voters is on.

And it appears Republicans have the edge.

Major funding for NJ Spotlight News is provided in part by NJM Insurance Group.

Serving the insurance needs of residents and businesses for more than 100 years, Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, and by the PSCG Foundation.

Well, candidates across New Jersey are preparing to enter the fall stretch to November's election, and a new voter registration analysis by The New York Times finds the Democratic Party is losing ground with new voters, while Republican voter registration numbers have been surging.

That's both across the country and here in New Jersey, where the GOP is outpacing Democrats, though the Democratic Party does still hold a wide margin here.

Senior political correspondent David Cruz joins me now after talking to some key political operatives in the state from both sides of the political aisle to interpret the numbers.

David, hey, it's good to see you.

So what do these voter registration numbers tell us about the trends that we're seeing here?

Yeah, it should be noted that both major parties have expanded their voter bases.

Republicans are up about 35%, while Democrats are up about 20%.

Republicans here, like strategists like Chris Russell, who is a Jack Cittarelli man, looks at those numbers and the trends, and he thinks that those numbers bode well for the GOP for come November.

CHRIS RUSSELL, Former GOP Strategist, The New York Times, New Jersey was kind of the tip of the spear in a lot of this.

It's been, with one exception, 53 straight months of Republican gains in terms of voter registration.

Back in 2020-21, we were 1.1 million registrants in the hole.

That's now down to about 860,000 or so.

A significant growth.

I think that was reflected in the '21 governor's race.

It was certainly reflected in the '24 presidential race.

And we're seeing it now.

And a lot of it is interesting, David.

It's not just the days of Republicans being viewed as the party of old people and people on their lawn ranting at people to get off their lawn.

It's not that way anymore.

Younger voters, minority voters, newer voters, Republicans are winning in all of these places and Democrats are losing.

So I think it's not just a function of a snapshot in time.

If this trend continues, and I think there's no reason to believe it won't right now, this is a great sign for Republicans, not just in the short term, but the long term.

Democrats no longer the party of, it's no longer cool to be a Democrat, right?

It's more cool to be a Republican at this point.

And I've been doing this for a long time and it's the first time I can say that in a long time, but it's certainly happening and that time story was really spelled it out very clearly.

It's more cool to be a Republican.

So you hear Chris Russell talking about the future there.

It's four and a half million new voters.

The deficit between Democrats and Republicans over the country is four and a half million voters.

And that's a lot of votes.

And it's going to take some years to make that up.

In New Jersey, Democrats have taken notice, but they seem to be doing pretty much nothing to close the gap.

We asked Phil Elijah this week.

He's a prominent Essex County Democratic operative.

He pointed out that there are still, and you heard Chris mention it, 860 or so thousand more Democrats than Republicans here in New Jersey, but that's down from 1.1 million just a few years ago.

Alonja says, despite that trend, registration numbers from the most recent primary are actually good news for Democrats.

Not a positive trend, but it's not an insurmountable trend.

It's not something that makes me worry for the 2025 election.

It may make me worry for 2035 or 2030, if the trend continues.

But I don't think these -- what we're talking about in July, the numbers just came out, and it was an increase of about 2,000 votes in Republican registrations, a number that absolutely concerns me, but not a number where I'm raising a red flag and saying this is going to affect the 2025 election.

To be able to vote in a primary in New Jersey, you need to declare.

And we had 82,000 unaffiliated voters declare for the Democratic Party in June.

That's an exciting number.

The energy in June for the Democratic Party, for all the candidates, the mayor, Barack, had huge excitement.

Steve Fulop had excitement.

Sweeney, Spiller, and Gottheimer.

And Mikey had the most.

So I think it was a great primary.

I think everyone now is consolidated behind Mikey Scherer.

Like I said, I'm concerned about it for the far future, but I don't think it's going to have an impact on -- as much on 2025 as you may believe.

You know, some people might call that a little cavalier, especially here in Jersey, where elections come, you know, every few months.

So we talked to Michael Rasmussen of the Rebovich Institute at Rider University, and he looks at these trends all the time.

He thinks Democrats should at least be a little worried.

I think this is a difference in enthusiasm, and it's a longer-term difference in enthusiasm.

Republicans are fired up.

They are knocking on doors.

They are out organizing.

They're out working.

They're hungry for this.

And so I think that's been the difference over the course of the long term.

You know, I like to take another snapshot look at things, which is that four years ago when Jack Ciattarelli lost to Governor Murphy by only 75,000 votes, the difference between Republicans and Democrats for that election was 1,070,000 voter advantage for Democrats.

They had over a million voter advantage over Republicans.

Now that difference is down to 864,000 voters.

And so it is a big difference, 200,000 votes, when you lost an election by 75,000 votes.

That is the kind of ground that you want to make up that's going to make you more competitive than the last election, not less competitive than the last election.

Well, I mean, that's an interesting point.

I wonder, though, David, do any of these numbers give us a breakdown of the demographics, exactly who is registering as new voters for these parties?

Well, we didn't see that in the Times analysis, but we do know, you heard Chris Russell say it's cool to be a Republican again.

In the last six years, Republicans went from roughly one-third of newly registered voters under 45 to a majority now.

So younger voters trending Republican.

The trend lines are equally bad for Democrats among Latino and African-American voters.

It should be noted, just for some context, that they still hold big majorities among Latinos and African-Americans.

But you saw that in the presidential election, Republicans did make some inroads with Latino voters and significantly black voters.

Yeah, I know Phil Elagia said he's not worried about this election, but in the years to come, and we know that those years creep up quickly, especially when it comes to politics.

David Cruz for us, David, thanks so much.

Thank you.

20 years ago today, Hurricane Katrina hammered the Gulf Coast, one of the deadliest and costliest natural disasters in U.S. history, causing widespread destruction, especially in New Orleans, where levee failures led to catastrophic flooding that submerged 80 percent of the city.

The Category 4 hurricane took nearly 1,400 lives and displaced thousands of others, including then-4-year-old Terrence Leon George, his mom and siblings, who scrambled for survival in Gulfport, Mississippi.

Before they were rescued, though, and made their way to New Jersey, an encounter would change the trajectory of Terrence's life, as well as how he reckoned with the trauma.

In this special report, WNYC's Michael Hill shares his story.

Terrence Leon George II was a boy born in hard-time Mississippi, to borrow some lyrics from Stevie Wonder.

And on August 29, 2005, he was surrounded by the wind, water, and wicked ways of Hurricane Katrina and its devastation.

In the aftermath of that storm, Terrence says he was exposed to a camera for the first time.

20 years later, he's an aspiring filmmaker.

And next month, his "Can I Grow Old?"

will show at the Newark International Film Festival.

First, what Katrina did.

Initially, like, I remember when I first heard the pour, it was like you hear like little driblets on the roof, then the howling, the whipping noises of just the wind brushing the windows, then the glass shattering and everything breaking, then we heard the trees snapping.

It just, it started to pick up like really quickly and next thing you knew my house is like, there's a tree in our house, the ceiling collapsed, my head's bleeding, my mom's trying to like, rub my head, and I'm just like really just dazed and you know she's trying to show it us and everything, water's getting into our house, it was really bad.

Terrence Leon George II says his Gulfport, Mississippi single-parent family was poor before the storm.

Hurricane Katrina rendered them hungry, homeless, and nearly helpless.

And my mom, she was really worried about getting her check from Ruby Tuesdays.

They told her, despite her working 40 hours that week, they would not pay her.

In the deep south, scorching heat and humidity that followed, an encounter with a non-profit organization would change the trajectory of Terrence's life and his family's future.

Feed the Children gave them food.

The non-profit's crew with the camera and recording equipment fascinated Terrence, who had a speech impediment.

- Well, my twin brother used to speak for me back in the day.

So like, I just like whisper in his ear and like, he would like just ask him questions.

But like, we were just asking like, who are they?

What are they doing?

Are they superheroes?

Like, what is that?

Is that a weapon?

'Cause like, when you see a camera for the first time, like you can look at any of these cameras, like it looks like some sort of like alien, like, you know, like hardware or something.

So to me, it was like, as a country boy, you know, grew up in a simple like neighborhood.

I was like, wow, what is this?

Feed the Children made an ad, pitching for money to help Katrina survivors.

It featured Terrence's mother Nikki, giving a tour of their destroyed house.

Nikki would borrow a crew member's cell phone to call her father in Bergen County, New Jersey.

He had been alerted that Nikki and her family were on TV.

He watched the feed the children had.

Mr. Buggs, what did you think when you saw that spot?

They looked desperate to me.

Yeah, they were very desperate.

And I don't know.

I knew I had to do something.

Terrence's grandfather, Reginald Buggs Sr., and his wife loaded up the car and drove to Mississippi.

When they arrived, Terrence says, "In that moment to me, he was like Superman.

That was my hero."

"Well, I love my grandson.

I'm glad he felt that way.

It was a proud moment."

Buds recalls quickly collecting his daughter and grandchildren and heading back north.

They stop to eat at a Tennessee restaurant.

"My daughter starts talking to some of the waitresses and before we knew it, the whole restaurant took a collection from my daughter right then and there."

"What?"

"They took a collection in that restaurant for her right then and there.

They gave her $600 in the free meal and everything when we left there.

What I saw for the first time was Americans coming together for Americans, regardless of who you are or whatever.

I saw that when we're in trouble, we will come together.

And you gotta understand, all the patrons, they were white patrons, but they all collected.

One guy gave $100, another gave $50.

- New Jersey has been no Nirvana, but the Garden State has proven fertile with opportunities.

Opportunities Terrence thinks he never would have had in Mississippi.

Terrence got speech therapy at Inglewood Hospital, where his grandfather's a senior biomedical technician.

He thrived in school, had a brush with the law as a teen, and became even more fascinated, not just with photography, because his grandfather had given him a camera, but filmmaking.

So when I got to filmmaking, it was like, finally, I found a language where I can express myself, my emotions, my desires.

Terrence says NYU was his dream school, but too expensive.

Even with his grandfather's support, it seems though he found a dream at Rutgers University's Mason Gross School of the Fine Arts.

It's a small program, but they care so much.

You could tell the intensity in their eyes, just the love, the love, it's reciprocated.

They love their craft, they love teaching, they love being here, and I love being here too.

So seeing a staff that just cared so much about every little small detail, every fine detail.

Everyone that's used this classroom to do this interview, even though I'm alumni, it's just that support, that network, you know, you can't beat that.

It's just, it's love, you know, and I have love for the school and school has love for me, and through that love I'm able to be a better person.

The school, in a way, healed me.

At Mason Gross, Terrence made this film, Terrence vs. Katrina.

It delves into his emotions.

You said anger.

Anger with Katrina?

Well, yeah, because like, believe it or not, I didn't really talk to people, like, what really happened to me during Katrina.

When I was in kindergarten, I remember every day I used to play up the blocks, I would, like, kind of stimulate Katrina, so it was like a lot of trauma for me.

So every day I would just stimulate it, and then after we watched that feed the kids, I was kind of ashamed because, you know, it was like, I grew up poor, I came from nothing, and my mom was a single mom, so we were still poor, and still going through struggles.

So even though we got up here, it's not that it wasn't any better, it's that the ripples and the effects of the Katrina were still affecting us.

And to this day, I believe it still affects us.

Where's your anger now?

My anger is in the camera.

I put it in Temperance of Katrina, and I must say, that's a very powerful film I made.

It's like a spoken word, poetry, documentary kind of film.

It's very different, and the reason I had to go out of the box for this film is because that's the only way I could express the feelings of anger and resentment.

Because in a way, I felt like Katrina ruined my life.

But as I got older, I realized maybe Katrina was a blessing for me.

As unfortunate as it is to say, my life was a struggle.

My life was hard.

It was difficult, like, you know, maneuvering everything, having a single mom, having multiple siblings.

I have, I'm the oldest of like five siblings.

So, you know, it wasn't easy just going through all that.

But, I don't know, it's like I blame Katrina for everything that happened to me.

But then after I made the film, I made it like here at Mason Groves.

After making the film, I realized that, you know, like, maybe like it wasn't a storm that caused all my problems.

Maybe it's like my internalized rage and I was like, how do I deal with that?

Like, how do I just make peace with it?

And after I made the film, I kind of achieved that peace.

That peace is allowing Terrence to prosper and produce films.

His "Can I Grow Old" is about black-on-black violence.

What do you hope comes of this film?

Honestly, just more awareness because, you know, the film was made for the gunman, the person who's holding the barrel of the gun, and it's like, you know, we the audience are the gunman and he's talking to us, so I want people to reflect on their decision before you commit acts of violence, before you hurt your own people, your own brothers, your own sisters, you know, your own humanity.

Can I grow old has won numerous awards.

It will be shown next Thursday, September 4th at the cityplex 12 theater in Newark.

20 years after Terrence's fascination began with the camera, a Katrina silver lining on the silver screen in New Brunswick, Michael Hill for NJ spotlight news In our spotlight on business report tonight.

What does it take to protect our Jersey beaches and the billions of dollars in tourism revenue they bring in?

Well, the issue is front and center after Hurricane Aaron washed away large chunks of the coastline for some shore towns here, like Monmouth Beach, where 50% of the sand was wiped away by the storm.

Not long after, a replenishment project had wrapped there.

I spoke with Monmouth Beach Mayor Tim Somers and Jane Bukinovich, a tourism expert and professor at Stockton University about the problem and potential solutions for our Labor Day special, Shrinking Shorelines.

Here's part of our conversation.

If that funding doesn't materialize, what will it mean for a town like yours, other shore towns, to not get the support that you need?

Well, I mean, obviously, it would be impossible for the residents of Monmouth Beach to shoulder the load and deposit the sand necessary on our beach.

This is why we work together with the federal and state partners to get this done.

And this is not a new thing.

This has been going on in the Jersey Shore since, you know, the early part of the 1900s, in a larger sense now in modern times.

But, you know, we're all aware that this is a problem.

And the protection, and I say protection because that's what this is, although all of us enjoy the beach as a recreational function, it is indeed here for our protection, for the life and property of the people that live near the shore.

We all enjoy it.

We all benefit from it financially, of course, but at the end of the day, without this, it would cause or could cause massive destruction along the Jersey Shore, and particularly places like here in Monmouth Beach.

- Professor Bukhanovich, it buys time, right, these replenishment projects, but it is expensive.

But how important is it when you stack up all of the items that drive the engine of New Jersey's economy?

How important is the shore when you put all of those pieces together?

Well, tourism in New Jersey, of course, is very important.

And the beaches are one of the reasons, one of the most important reasons why people travel to New Jersey.

In many studies that were done in various academic institutions, beaches come out as either number one or two of the reason why people choose a tourism destination.

And in New Jersey, the economic impact of tourism is measured in billions, not millions.

So, it really is worth it to keep investing in the beaches and preserve this beautiful asset that we have that attracts visitors to the state.

As sea levels rise though and as storms intensify, are towns, Professor, or should towns be rethinking how they market themselves or what they have to offer beyond the beaches?

Well, many New Jersey towns, especially Atlantic City, have amenities other than the beaches, but you can really see a spike in tourism during the summer season.

In Atlantic City visitation, as we measure it through the number of cars going through the toll plaza, increases by 50%.

Casino revenue increases by about 30%.

So the beaches, although there are other amenities that do provide economic impact to the state, the beaches really help to magnify that impact, especially in the summer season.

Support for the Business Report is provided by Riverview Jazz.

Presenting the Jersey City Latin Jazz Festival, September 5th through 6th.

Event details, including performance schedules and location are online at jerseycitylatinjazzfestival.com.

- And again, make sure to check out the full Shrinking Shoreline special on Monday.

That's gonna do it for us this week.

A reminder though, you can download our podcast wherever you listen and watch us anytime by subscribing to the NJ Spotlight News YouTube channel.

Plus, you can always follow us on Instagram and Blue Sky to stay up to date on all the state's big headlines.

And if you want to help support the programming public media brings you and keep stations like this one thriving, head to njspotlightnews.org/donate.

I'm Brianna Vannozzi.

For the entire team at NJ Spotlight News, thanks for being with us.

Have a safe and happy Labor Day weekend.

We'll see you right back here on Monday.

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